Knowing
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: In which Regina comes to a rather reluctant realization about a certain smug-faced thief. Enchanted Forest, Missing Year.


**a|n:** some more missing year for you! i am always weak for oq masking their feelings with anger when the other one gets hurt. i could probably write a million and five ways for it to happen and never get tired of it... :)

* * *

 _knowing_

* * *

She learns the truth under the most unfortunate of circumstances.

In retrospect, she supposes she could have recognized the signs sooner. Snow has not exactly been subtle about it, what with her constant elbow nudges and kicking less-than-daintily beneath the table every time Regina so much as sneezes in the thief's direction.

But the woman is nothing if not a serial meddler, and if Regina bothered to decipher every pointed look and raised eyebrow that Snow sends her way, she'd hardly have time left to spend on the things that actually matter. She has monkeys to vanquish and a sister to destroy, after all.

And on the rare but satisfying occasion when a few choice incivilities cause the thief's smug face to waver just enough for her to get the last word in, well, she'll consider that an added bonus.

Regina hardly understands it at first, the day she sees that ever-stubborn smile of his fail him before she's had a chance to break it herself.

…

She's deep into the solace of her afternoon horseback ride when she spies a man running toward her, his arms windmilling wildly, footfalls punctuated with incoherent shouts.

It's Little John, ruddy and sweat-soaked, stained to the elbows in someone else's blood.

She urges her mare into a gallop before he's finished relaying the news, that their hunt has taken a decidedly grim turn and _please—Your Majesty—it's Robin, he—he needs your help—_

The Merry Men scatter from where they've huddled over ground when the Queen dismounts, advancing on them with a fury that seems to frighten them more than the prospect of being trampled down by any horse.

She finds the thief splayed on his back at awkward angles, as though he'd simply fallen that way and lacks the strength to realign himself. Apart from the spasms of pain clenching his eyes shut, the increasingly shallow _up-down, up-down_ of his chest, he is still, too still.

His men have made shreds of his tunic, fashioning them into bandages around a bloody gash in his side—courtesy of some wild, horned thing they'd failed to capture, Regina would hazard to guess—but the fabric has already soaked through, warm and wet and red (so red) to the touch as she lands hard on her knees beside him.

If this wound isn't what ends him (and her heart leaps madly against her throat at such a thought, for she never had given him permission to do this to her), she _will_ be sure to finish him off herself.

He barely seems to know his surroundings while she crouches over his body, his eyes glassy and unseeing when they flutter open at the harsh sound of his name. All he musters in response is a single, pained groan.

He no longer recalls enough of himself to needle her in that way she can hardly stand, with those dimpled smirks and laughing eyes, and it distresses her to a degree she cannot allow herself to dwell on right now.

But his grimacing begins to abate as she works, life and color slowly returned to his cheeks inch by inch, and he _will_ be driving her to insanity again soon enough, if she has any say in the matter.

Her shoulders slump forward with relief or despair (she hardly knows which) when the ease of breathing comes back to him in small, shuddering increments. His eyes have closed again, but his grip is strong where he's reached to find her hand on his belly, strong and rough where years have left their mark on his skin.

She finds she is too weak to pull away from him.

"He still needs stitches," she orders the nearest of the thief's men, and the sound of her own voice—clipped short yet distant, as though spoken from someplace foreign—startles her.

The somber one in floor-length robes kneels down to patch up what her magic could not, moving over half-mended injuries with a careful, experienced touch.

The brunt of the thief's wounds digs deep into her own belly now, pain seizing hold of her there with phantom teeth and claws, and Regina would have been remiss in her lessons to forget that _all magic, dearie, comes with a price_.

"Your Majesty, you're…you're bleeding," says Friar Tuck, aghast, and she might have mocked him for stating the obvious if the world hadn't chosen that moment to flicker and fade, falling sideways into blackness.

…

All she sees is blue when she wakes—not the blue amongst clouds in an afternoon sky, but the blue at the center of two matching flames, burning her wherever they touch.

He's ripped his cloak apart and bound the sleeves tight around her middle. The cloth is blessedly dry where her fingers have instinctively curled to rest, but she's not so concerned about the things that will heal (she's endured scars far worse than this) as she is the things that might not.

Words escape her for the time being—stolen, it would seem, by a thief made desperate to fill the silence with something, and she has never known him to look so… _angry_ with her.

And so it appears she is just as helpless to handle a thief who's forgotten to smile, as he is a Queen who has grown quiet, too quiet, for his apparent liking.

" _Never_ ," he growls through his teeth, and Regina is reminded of thunder preceding a rainstorm, "use your magic on me like that again. Do I make myself clear?"

The accusation hits too unexpectedly for her to mask the sting of it, and she recoils from him, meeting a resistance (a dismay) she's too faint yet to overcome when he gathers her with minimal effort into the bend of his arms.

His face draws in close then, too close, all the furrowed lines of his fury open to her baffled perusal, and she cannot abide to give the impression that his ingratitude, his unmistakable revulsion for the magic that had saved him, _means_ anything to her.

"You know," she says, as scathingly as she can manage while suffering the indignity of being carried back to her castle like something small and terribly fragile, "where civilized people come from, a simple _thank you_ would suffice."

A snickering, poorly muffled, ripples behind them in waves. The thief stares down at her, stunned, for a long and speechless moment, until the air between his gaze and hers heats to a nearly unbearable degree.

She's powerless against the flush rising up her neck as his voice drops low, caressing her in places she can't quite name. "Was Your Majesty ever under the illusion that I came from such an upbringing?"

"How like a thief to have claimed as much before," Regina sniffs, scornful. "I've always said you're not to be trusted." But the solid warmth of his embrace has made a traitor of her body, and she supposes it would hardly hurt to tolerate him just a little while longer.

His smile is coy, slow-spreading, startlingly sweet for how it makes her ache in silent triumph, and she understands, now, that he'd always meant to laugh his way into her heart, and how foolish she'd been to ever think of stifling such a sound.

Though she will be the first to deny any knowledge of such things.


End file.
